Colt Aircrew .38 Special

[Lee Enfield]

The issue with both the Colt and the S&W Aircrewman revolvers is not the frame, it is the Cylinder, which is Aluminum Alloy .

Having said that, a quick search on the S&W Forum revealed that the reason the revolvers were destroyed is that while the Colt Aircrewman were taken from standard production Cobra & Courier frames, the S&W manufactured J Frames cracked.

Even today, the Aluminum alloy (Scandium for example) guns have Steel cylinders (I see the current S&W 340PD has a titanium cylinder).